350 TRANSACTIONS OP ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



doubt, in other respects, but who could just as soon, and indeed 

 do sooner, adopt the career of police officers. I ought to explain 

 that the examinations for forest and police officers are at present 

 nearly the same, and as the successful candidates of the right age 

 have the right of choice of the one they prefer, they most fre- 

 quently choose the police, because their service begins at once, 

 instead of after the heavy expense of a three yeai-s' training- 

 course. This system would seem to present a bar to the obtaining 

 of the best men for forest work, especially men with scientific 

 aptitudes. 



In France and other European countries, where the forest 

 service is a kind of corps d' elite, the students for the special 

 Forest Schools are mostly selected from the most suitable of the 

 students at the Colleges of Agriculture, so that before they begin 

 their special training they are already interested in and well 

 grounded in science. In this country, with scientific degrees 

 conferred at the universities, and more especially at Cambridge 

 and Edinburgh, a very little alteration in the age of admission 

 and rules of selection would be necessary to ensure candidates 

 having already a good grounding in preliminary science, and a 

 considerable special botanical and forest knowledge as well. 



Another lesson which might be drawn from the exhibits shown 

 in the Austrian and Hungarian Sections is that of the develop- 

 ment of modern methods of utilisation of forest products. Take, 

 for instance, paper-pulp. M. Medard told us, as I have already 

 mentioned, at the Forest Congress, that the paper-pulp industry 

 in Sweden and Norway and Canada could be valued at about 

 £8,000,000 sterling. A considerable portion of this is purchased 

 by the United Kingdom ; but I believe very little, if any, is 

 produced here at all. The chief tree used for paper-pulp is the 

 spruce, grown in close plantations to avoid knots in the wood, 

 and cat at a comparatively early age, when capable of giving 

 straight pieces free from knots and branches, of from 4 to S 

 inches in diameter. According to Mr ^V. Pi. Fisher, in his work 

 on "Utilisation," there were in 1892 about six hundred factories 

 for paper-pulp in Germany, and two hundred in Austria-Hungary, 

 producing annually about 270,000 tons of pulp. There seems no 

 reason why much of the private forest-land in the United King- 

 dom should not be devoted to wood-pulp timber-growing, and there 

 is every reason to think that it would be a profitable industry. 



Among other countries represented by Forest collections at the 



